evolution-9
Explanation
This comic takes place at what appears to be a natural history museum, where a parent and child are looking at a display of prehistoric sea creatures, likely ancient squid or cephalopods.
The parent exclaims "Oh my God so many squids!" and wonders why there were so many. The explanation given is that squid found it "too easy" being top predators but "somehow it worked" -- they were embarrassingly successful. Then comes the key question: "Where are all the potential mates?" The answer: they don't need to display or compete because they're already "corrupting themselves" (likely a joke about the creatures' bizarre reproductive strategies).
The child asks how squid evolved to shoot ink, suggesting it was a defense mechanism. The parent asks "Just like this?" implying it was too sudden. The punchline in the final panel shows a time jump: "We may never know" -- with the implication that some evolutionary developments are simply lost to time.
The humor plays on the common museum experience of a parent trying to explain evolution to a child and getting increasingly flustered by questions they can't answer. It also pokes fun at how evolutionary explanations can sometimes feel like just-so stories -- we observe the results but the actual mechanism of how specific traits evolved can be genuinely mysterious. The comic captures the comedic gap between the confident displays in natural history museums and the actual uncertainty of evolutionary science.